For a split second, I thought that this flesh-colored blur outside was one of my sisters playing a prank on me but I realized almost simultaneously that my sisters were definitely still snoozing away peacefully at this hour of the morning. The hair on the back of my neck rose as I watched a human face come straight up the window to look inside.

I could neither move nor speak as I stared at the face in horror. The frozen glass warped the features, but I could still see dark shadows where the eyes were and a nose and a mouth. The eyes shifted slightly from left to right, as if looking around the room and it was at this moment that I broke out of my shock.

I stumbled backwards towards the door and I managed to scream weakly through my hyperventilation. I found the door and shut it forcefully to escape the awful staring person. After another second, I found my courage and opened the door again. The face had disappeared.

I got my parents up soon after this and hysterically told them that there had been a person staring through the window at me. My mom believed me but my dad was skeptical. I walked with him outside to the side of the house to see if there were any footprints, but we couldn’t tell one way or the other. By this time, there was light outside and my legs had stopped feeling like jelly.

To this day, I cannot decide whether this was an actual person peeping in at me or if I had been sleepwalking. On one hand, I am definitely capable of turning on a shower since I have managed to do similar coordinated things in my sleep. On the other hand, it seems unbelievable that I could have conjured such a horrific image from my imagination without having first seen something like in on TV. I definitely would remember watching something like that. So it is really anyone’s guess now. Was this reality or simply a vivid dream?